Last Action Hero

Last Action Hero was a legendary box office bomb in 1993, crushed by Jurassic Park, and has since been re-evaluated as a genuinely clever meta-action film that was a decade ahead of its time. Arnold plays Jack Slater, an action movie character who exists inside a fictional franchise. A young fan is magically transported into Slater’s world, and later, Slater is pulled into the real world, where bullets actually kill people and good guys don’t always win. The deconstruction of action movie tropes — unlimited ammo, conveniently timed explosions, the hero never dying — anticipated Deadpool by over 20 years. Charles Dance’s villain is superb, and Arnold’s willingness to mock his own persona is genuinely endearing.